Synopsis

The story is about a love triangle between the male protagonist Makoto, and the two heroines Kotonoha and Sekai. Makoto develops a love interest in Kotonoha, a girl in the same year but different class. Although they both take the same train to school, she is unaware of his existence. His classmate, Sekai, manages to put the two together despite holding strong feelings towards Makoto.

The story is the same as the 12-episode anime's first episode, with minor differences in the script. It sets everything up very nicely. The ending of this version is much more dramatic than that of its counterpart, but in a good way. The downside, however, is that it discontinues; you would have to watch the 12-episode version to find out what happens next.

ART - 4

Being an ONA, I cut it some slack. It's on par with low-quality GIF art, which I can excuse in exchange for the decent job on the characters themselves, and the recycled backgrounds are understandable. However, some of the
conversation scenes include stationary characters at a long-distance shot that was eye-hurtingly bad. One thing I did like about it was that it maintained the feel of a visual novel, with unusual clip splicing (usually with character profiles).

SOUND - 5

Nothing good or bad in particular about the soundtrack. The OP and ED are typical anime music, and the background music is elevator-worthy. I suspect it was taken directly from the game; it did lend to the visual novel feel. The voice acting was decent.

CHARACTER - 6

The characters are presented much the same as in the 12-episoder. Makoto is a little more obviously violent, and Katsura seems to have more personality immediately evident. The lack of complicated character animation, however, failed to bring them out. Particularly in Sekai's case, the focus was directed on fan service.

ENJOYMENT - 5

Watching this was sort of a novel experience, no pun intended, due to the very visual novel feel. However, the animation quality was off-putting, and the familiarity of the script made it a little boring.

OVERALL - 5

Not a bad anime, but there are better things to be watching, including the other version of School Days. I wouldn't recommend this except to diehard fans or to those who haven't yet watched the other version- in the case of the latter, I will say this does make a good way to sample the anime.

OK, to get it from the top:
This episode is a game promo, so it may be treated only as its commercial, or the anime series preview. It perfectly fullfills the requirements, but nothing more than that. Actually, it's slightly rescripted first episode, or vice versa, doesn't matter. If you seen the ONA, you don't need to watch the first episode, if you seen the first episode... you know the rest. Its benefits just like the first episode's — it catches you and doesn't let until the next dose of series

It cannot be taken separately so if you've watched this, just know — you're on the
hook

Back in the starting era of my anime (or rather, my anime days ;)), I would binge-watch WatchMojo's crappy TOP 10 lists in hope to kill some time, that until I stumbled across the infamous “TOP 10 anime characters deaths”.
It was then when I picked up interest in anime for the first time, and it was all thanks to Makoto's featured death. School Days ONA is a pointless retelling to the first episode of the original series, just a complete replica with no extra effort put on neither the animation, not the audio work and the reason behind it is still just as oblivious.
Now I
like my School Days as much as the next guy (probably not), but this, this was just utterly despicable to put as a standalone release, unless you haven't seen the show in ages and just wanted a quick reminder on how it all started, I'd suggest keeping all the distance you can from this low-level trash. I'm still haunted by how awful the animation is that I'd swear the pixels are easily countable within the range of any first-grader. And let me raise “another” exclamation mark on the low-quality voice acting, besides Kotonoha's, everything sounded like seagulls screaming at a potato webcam's integrated microphone.